The Literary Theory

Nearly a century ago, the English literary critic, I. A. Richards, spoke of a “chaos of critical theories,” an assessment that would not be wide of the mark in the early years of the twenty-first century. The student of literature today is confronted with an array of theoretical approaches that touch on nearly every facet of human  experience, from language and history to sexuality and gender, from cognitive  science to the environment. How is one to choose? The Literary Theory Handbook is designed to help readers find their way through the chaos of theory by providing in-depth overviews of the leading approaches. Most of the theorists discussed in these pages assume that literary texts – and not just books, but other kinds of texts, like film and other works of art – give us pleasure and help us understand the world around us. Some recent theoretical fields, like posthumanism, are profoundly  concerned with what it means to be human and what our relation ought to be with the non-human. This new emphasis is, in some respects, a return to the humanism that for centuries defined literary and cultural study – but with an important  difference. For the posthumanism we find today has learned the lessons of  theoretical reflection on humanism, anti-humanism, and a host of other perspectives. My point is that not only does literature matter but theory matters too, and not simply because it helps us understand literature. Theory has its own claim on our attention because it seeks, like literature has always done, to make the world come alive in our imagi-nations. Theory can be hard sometimes, especially when a specialized vocabulary is involved.

جهت استعلام قیمت و سفارش چاپ این محصول لطفا با انتشارات گنج حضور تماس حاصل فرمایید